Major planning developments

Planning Performance Agreements (PPA)

We promote the service of pre-application advice through the mechanism of a Planning Performance Agreement (PPA) for large scale development as a proactive and beneficial way of working together to provide high quality development and deliver planning decisions in a timely manner. A Planning Performance Agreement Charter has been developed setting out the benefits and responsibilities for both developers and us in following this project management approach.

A PPA provides a comprehensive service agreeing and defining objectives for the site, timetabling milestones and setting out communication parameters to provide certainty for all parties and it is tailored to the requirements of a particular project. An agreed financial contribution is associated with a PPA to ensure that timely and quality pre-application advice is provided and delivery milestones achieved. We can only recover the cost of providing the service and an average hourly officer rate is published within the standard fees and charges (PDF 122.4KB) which provides the basis of the fee with an agreed level of officer’s time.

The benefits of a PPA are:

providing certainty for all development partners (the Council, developer, elected members and the community) in terms of an agreed timetable for the handling of complex major projects

nomination of a project lead on behalf of both the Council and developer to take forward the major development proposals in accordance with the agreed timetable

providing certainty about the requirements for processing large scale complex applications

clarifying the means of engagement and consultation with the local community, in accordance with the Statement for Community Involvement

establishing a clear framework for the delivery of the complex major projects

As part of the PPA, an agreed schedule of meetings will take place to discuss the proposal and to resolve any key planning issues.

Environmental advice on planning applications is supplied by the Environment Agency and Natural England and some advice may be charged for where it is more complicated. The PPA Project Lead will seek to coordinate this advice to ensure that it is integrated with the overall planning assessment.